Personal journal dealing mainly with music listened to, plus various food and wine matters. Rants at a few favourite topics.

Monday, 10 April 2017

Good Times for Music Lovers

Young people who like
classical music (“young” for me being under 45 years of age) do
not realise how lucky they are. Not much more than 100 years ago, you
took what you were given in terms of repertoire played in your local
area. The advent of broadcast music then helped enormously to widen choice and knowledge of alternatives, as did
the arrival of recorded music. But, until the arrival of the World Wide Web, streaming, downloading, and online ordering, choices were
still somewhat limited. I have just had a mini-festival of the violin
music of Julius Röntgen, played by Ragin Wenk-Wolff, Liza
Ferschtman, and by Atsuko Sahara. As it happens, I enjoy the genial
music of this Dutch composer who was admired by Brahms and by Grieg.
But I would have been hard pressed to listen to different recordings
of Röntgen's music even thirty years ago. Nowadays, with a few
clicks of a mouse, one can find pretty well any piece of music,
somewhere or other. And listen to it, or buy a recording of it made
any time after 1900.

The current era is good
for those wanting to listen to music, but it is also good for
professional musicians who want to be known and heard. Not more than around 60 years ago, there was
room for only a handful of pianists, conductors, orchestras or
violinists to become well known and famous. When I started collecting
recordings back in the 1950s, even popular classics such as the
Beethoven symphonies could only be found with a choice of 5-10
versions, according to the place in which one lived. When I wanted a recording of Ginette Neveu playing the
Sibelius violin concerto, one of my sisters had to buy it for me in
New York, since it was not available in England (the recording
companies released recordings territory by territory, in those days, and shopping around, except in person, was pretty difficult).

A good friend pointed
me towards a most useful website listing live performances of
performances with orchestras
(http://orchestraondemand.blogspot.co.uk/).
What riches, and what a plethora of artists I have never heard of!
Twice in my life I have been to Braunschweig in Germany, but it was
only through the on-demand website that I discovered there is a
Braunschweiger Staatsorchester whose conductor is named
Albrecht Mayer; together, they turn in an excellent performance of
Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia. And then there was a young
violinist called Maria Milstein (no relative of Nathan, I suspect)
playing the Glazunov violin concerto (very well). Apart from the on-demand website (and many similar) there is also YouTube to introduce
unknown players to the general public. We are lucky to have this
explosive burst of classical music, new and old.